Chasing the Two Battleships

[Guest]

Has anyone else found this mission insufferably boring? Like I'm hoping for a running gun duel and yet I spend half the time not even in sight and after that I only find one ship and kill it and am totally unable to find the other one. And before you mention that I might have made my ship too slow its 29 knots, and I had a 42 knot scouting DD, which only caught the one and couldn't find the other at all. Eventually I timed out having not even seen the second BB.

[VarangianGarde]

The same thing happened to me. I would suggest that most scenarios start with an "enemy in sight." It doesn't have to be in gun range, but it should be a definite contact.

[Guest]

Gun range is sight range most of the time.

[Latur Husky]

If you go with Recon tech, you'll get radar. Both enemy BB's are together, and they should be visible from the start as they start 23 - 26km away from the player position. 

However yes this mission is pretty much same as exciting as watching paint dry with latter being more fun.

 

They should replace one of BB's with few CA's, CL's and couple of DD's and set the other one to have it's engines damaged so that player has to go through escort and catch up with crippled BB and finish him off. They can also make it more modern BB with less advanced radar or without it. That would make this mission way better I think.

Edited October 26, 2019 by Asthaven

[VarangianGarde]

Yes, although often sight range is not effective range for guns.

 

Let's say (for simplicity) you're on a destroyer bridge at 10m height. You'd be able to see another ship along the horizon at 11.3 km. However, you'd still see the ship past this point (depending on size). If the air is clear enough, you'd see the ship "sink" below the horizon as it recedes. Let's say its another destroyer with a 10m conning tower. You'd see at least a portion of the ship out to 22 km. If you're using 5" guns, then you can see it, but you won't be able to hit it.

[Latur Husky]

47 minutes ago, VarangianGarde said:

Yes, although often sight range is not effective range for guns.

 

Let's say (for simplicity) you're on a destroyer bridge at 10m height. You'd be able to see another ship along the horizon at 11.3 km. However, you'd still see the ship past this point (depending on size). If the air is clear enough, you'd see the ship "sink" below the horizon as it recedes. Let's say its another destroyer with a 10m conning tower. You'd see at least a portion of the ship out to 22 km. If you're using 5" guns, then you can see it, but you won't be able to hit it.

True, but, if they would introduce fully realistic spotting distances then in perfect conditions a DD that has 10m high tower should be able to spot Iowa class Battleship from nearly 40km... problem is that Iowa Battleship should be able to do the same with DD...  When we take Radar into consideration we're talking about 50 - 100km detection ranges (depends on radar class) in perfect conditions... 

Also they would have to adjust guns to realistic values so for Iowa class battleship it was 23nm (42.5km) range for 16" (406mm) gun and about 9nm (16.6km) for 5" (127mm) gun. It might indeed be interesting to see how would that work in a game xD

[ThatZenoGuy]

2 hours ago, Absolute0CA said:

Has anyone else found this mission insufferably boring? Like I'm hoping for a running gun duel and yet I spend half the time not even in sight and after that I only find one ship and kill it and am totally unable to find the other one. And before you mention that I might have made my ship too slow its 29 knots, and I had a 42 knot scouting DD, which only caught the one and couldn't find the other at all. Eventually I timed out having not even seen the second BB.

 

Its one of the weakest missions in the game IMO.

I made a 'relatively slower' BB and found them, but had a hard time chasing them down.

No worries, just make it faster, right? Made the damned BB go like 30 knots+...Then the new enemies spawned with 30 knot speed or something, so again it was hard to chase them down.

Trick is to just smash their funnels/engines on both, then just close the gap.

Still won with barely a few minutes on the timer.

[RedParadize]

Please do not start with enemy in sight! That would be bad.

I actually never had that problem to be honest. To save time I usually split all my ship and put them on IA. 99% of the times I get in range within a minute or two.
 

[Guest]

Took me 20 or so this last time I tried and that was with radar against a 21 and 23 knot ships, with a 42 knot scouting DD, this is by far one of the most boring missions currently available.

[Cptbarney]

Don't think i've played this mission yet.

But my god the amount of times in the WIP dreadnought mission or the pre dreadnought mission where one or two ships bugger of to the next universe becomes increasingly annoying.

Even worse when your dd's have superior speed but terrible acceleration so they take ages to even get up to full never mind max and actually maintain that speed during turns of anykind (shallow, steep, extreme etc.).

The new ship hull in the new mission looks interesting 100k tonnes weeeeeee, miss H44 here we come! (jus need 19 and 20 inch guns now maybe 21 and 22 as well).

But yeah ships flying off to the moon and you can't catch (or worse hit them) is pretty annoying.

Oh well back to the drawing board me thinks

[RedParadize]

@Absolute0CAI know it's most likely intended. But you you could have much better if you splitted this in two ships. And that weight offset gonna cost you.

[sarrumac]

Yes, boring and uneventful. The ennemy don't have any fight in them and their ships are weak.  I would like this mission, but the ennemy is actually running toward reinforcement, and you NEED to kill them fast or risk being overwhelmed, for instance.

Edited October 27, 2019 by sarrumac

[VarangianGarde]

3 hours ago, sarrumac said:

Yes, boring and uneventful. The ennemy don't have any fight in them and their ships are weak.  I would like this mission, but the ennemy is actually running toward reinforcement, and you NEED to kill them fast or risk being overwhelmed, for instance.

Beat Beatty, or the Hipper ships will turn to Jelicoe!

[VarangianGarde]

10 hours ago, RedParadize said:

Please do not start with enemy in sight! That would be bad.

I actually never had that problem to be honest. To save time I usually split all my ship and put them on IA. 99% of the times I get in range within a minute or two.
 

I think it would be more realistic. Historically, the only way an engagement would even start would be if ships came within sight of one another. Hell, at Jutland the engagement essentially ended once night fell and the fleets largely lost contact. Once RADAR was introduced, as noted elsewhere, contact ranges increased significantly. However, considering the vast majority of the game falls before 1930, I think its critical the mechanics for optically sighted engagements to be correct.

 

As it stands, the current scenario just gives you a direction to head, then you have to just grind for a while to get there. If the battleships diverge, then its just a crapshoot if you'll find the other one in time. Having realistic sight ranges would essentially solve that issue, assuming that your crew would competently track the enemy formation in the pre-battle maneuvering, allowing you to act out the scenario itself.

 

Check out this site for a quick horizon calculator:

http://www.ringbell.co.uk/info/hdist.htm

 

@Nick Thomadis

Edited October 27, 2019 by VarangianGarde
Looping in the Devs

[midge]

I have also had problems on this Mission, it seems to be heavily luck dependant. I built a BB with the maximum allowed speed (33 kn) and was still only able to get just into range of the faster enemy BB with rougly 10 mins left on the mission timer. It turns out the BB I was chasing had a top speed of 29 kn and it was therefore almost impossible to complete the mission without building a BC and whacking up the Speed to ridicolous levels (the fastest DD i got at 34 kn never got into Range of the last BB).

[DeiLwynnA]

whenever i built a battleship, i have failed at catching up to the enemies in time, though when i have built battlecruisers, i have been able to catch them very easily because of the higher top speed, this design in the picture below has never failed me on the search and destroy mission, i could replace one of the turrets midship with a funnel or two to get higher engine efficiency so i could chase even better 

[Cptbarney]

9 minutes ago, DeiLwynnA said:

whenever i built a battleship, i have failed at catching up to the enemies in time, though when i have built battlecruisers, i have been able to catch them very easily because of the higher top speed, this design in the picture below has never failed me on the search and destroy mission, i could replace one of the turrets midship with a funnel or two to get higher engine efficiency so i could chase even better 

The next patch you won't even need to design like dat if we get the nelson hull in most missions.